


February Words #13: Bottom

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Series: February Words (2018) [12]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Carbonite, Force Visions, Multi, Post-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Pre-OT3, Pre-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Tatooine, post-Bespin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 18:24:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13664703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: Luke hasnt been able to feel Han through the Force since he rushed off to Bespin. Now, the night before Leia is set to infiltrate Jabba’s Palace, his presence is back. It's weak, and distant. But when you’re at the bottom there’s nowhere to go but up.





	February Words #13: Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of my February Words prompt challenge, although like the others, this story stands alone and does not require you to have read the others.
> 
> Because I liked my post-Endor, I wanted to try a post-Bespin. TBH, I’m not really thrilled with how it came out. (Warning, purple prose ahead?)
> 
> But. The point of this challenge is to write something every day. And I finished this. So... let me know what you think!

~3.5 ABY~

Han was here.

Luke hadn’t expected it to hit him so strongly, the overwhelming _nearness_ of his presence. He hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, how dim and cold it felt. How locked in pain.

He had to steady himself with one hand, against the wall of the hut that was as close as they dared get to Jabba's palace. For a moment, it felt like he was falling--not to the ground but through it, to something so far down he couldn't know.

"Luke? What's wrong?" Leia was at his side in an instant, her hand between his shoulder blades a steady guiding presence.

Luke focused on it. On her. On the room. And then he found his voice.

"I can feel him."

He hadn't been able to, before. Lando's intelligence had told him that Han was alive, and his dreams had been full of conflicted visions. Han tumbling out of his carbonite tomb, grasping for Luke, or for Leia. Han in pain. Han in restful sleep. Han dead, before they could reach him. Han on Yavin and Han on Hoth. Han in the pilot's seat of the Falcon, in a hundred different scenes that could be past or future or neither, but never present.

Luke had never been able to feel Han as he was _now_.

"Is it Vader?" Leia's face was pale, worried. She wrapped her arms around him and made him sit down, and took a warm canteen out of her backpack.

"No." Luke choked on an inappropriate laugh, and reached for the hot blue milk to wash it away with. It wasn't funny. It wasn’t funny that it could have been Vader. It wasn’t even funny that it wasn't. "Vader's... there,” he said. “But not close. Leia… I can feel Han."

Leia didn't even try to hide her feelings. It was like something broke, in her face, in her spirit. Some kind of protective shell that had cracked, and left all her raw hope out on display. "But I thought you couldn't...?"

"I thought I couldn't, either." They'd thought it was Vader. They'd thought it was the carbonite. They'd thought it was the painkillers or maybe just the pain. Luke had privately thought that Han had somehow... blamed him, in his frozen subconscious, for what had happened. Or that maybe Luke had somehow cut himself off from Han, to protect him from who he really was. But whatever the reason, they'd given up on using the Force to help them find him.

"I thought I couldn't," Luke said again. "But... I definitely feel him now. It's like..." It was like the first drop of water after a Tatooine drought. Or maybe it was more like the first time he’d touched something with his new hand--such a good, normal thing that he’d almost gotten used to not having, that he hadn't quite believed he’d feel again. But still a little… off. Still a little different. Still a little not quite what it had been before.

But he didn't think Leia would understand either of those examples.

“It was like… coming out of a dark room, and seeing the light for the first time in…” Days, weeks, months, he wanted to say. Instead, he went with: “...hours. But he’s faint,” Luke admitted. "Soft. Like a part of him's still far away. It's the first time I've felt him, since..." He tried to smile, but Force or no Force, he knew Leia could see right through him. "It... overwhelmed me. That's all." He shivered.

Leia moved closer, wrapped her arms around him. "You were right," she said. "All those months ago on Hoth. It does get cold on Tatooine, after all."

Luke didn't know how to answer that. It seemed like another world, another life. How could those people, who had been so young and in love and invincible, have ended up here, at the end of the world?

"I wish I could feel him." Leia went on. Her voice was soft, just barely not a whisper. "I wish I knew, at least," she said, "how I could feel you, then."

They had talked about that, on the medical ship, in those first early, frustrated days of waiting. There was nothing either of them could do, except do the best they could to heal while they waited for Chewie and Lando. So they'd talked about it, a little, what had happened between them on Bespin. Luke had tried to explain to Leia how to focus, to deliberately reach out. But she hadn't been able to repeat what she had done. And then they'd been apart--Leia helping Lando with that side of the mission, Luke immersing himself in the Force, trying to train himself as a Jedi with almost nothing to go on and the plan he’d put together with Lando like a ticking detonator in his head.

Maybe it was just that his mind was clearer now. He’d gotten better at pushing it back—all the love and longing and guilt and regret that swept over him when he thought of Han. He’d learned to put his feelings aside—or at least to nearly bury them. Maybe that was why he could feel Han now.

Or maybe it was Leia. Luke watched her in the glowlight, the shadows on her face still and deep. After all, she loved him too.

"Close your eyes," Luke said.

She gave him a skeptical look at first, but did as he suggested. He turned to face her, took her hands. "Reach out,” he said. “Try to feel me first. I’m with you. Right here.”

He tried to open himself up. It was harder, since Bespin. He’d been so focused on not letting Vader in that he didn't think he could let all his shields down if he wanted to. Luke knew he would have to be completely in control during their mission. But with Leia, he had only one thing to hide.

"Okay." She breathed out. "I... I don't know. Of course I feel you. I’m touching you. You're right here."

“Not like that.” Luke focused on their connection—not the link of their hands, but the way they wrapped around each other in the Force. “It flows in us and through us. Between us. Around us. Connecting… everything. And everybody.”

“Luke,” Leia whispered. “You… sound like a Jedi.”

There was pride in what she said, but sadness too.

“He’s there.” Luke focused again on that dim light, that came into sharper focus now. “Can you feel him?”

Leia sucked in a sharp breath.

Han was here, around them, as he had been on Hoth, in the shelter. A white heat, a comfort. A strength, reverberating. Like the sound of an engine in a vast and vacant hangar, filling the space until it was more than its specs should ever have allowed it to be.

It was their first kiss. Casual, a fake show of bravado—for Luke, yes, but for Han too. It was little moments—an embrace in the hangar before a mission, Han’s smell and the roughness of day-old stubble against Luke’s cheek as not-so-subtle reminders of why he had to—he _had_ to—come home.

It was Leia, then, in a briefing room somewhere, all brittle nerves under what seemed like anger. Luke felt Han’s arms, as they’d seemed to her then—a calm, in the midst of this storm. Another kiss—this one softer, unexpected. One Leia would have only allowed behind closed doors.

And then Luke was holding her—here in the present, in the sandy little hut on Tatooine. He wasn’t sure how much she was seeing, but the tears streaming down her cheeks said she _saw_.

"Focus,” Luke whispered. He kissed her on the temple. And Han was here, with them both. Brighter now. The canteen had rolled to the other side of the room, but none of them needed its warmth.

And they were soaring, all three of them, out in the stars. It was like they’d been drifting all crooked, Luke and Leia, like one of their engines had gone dark and they were tossed out to space with no repairs.

Now they flew.

It was still a little lopsided, too light on one side by the absence of Han’s laugh, his smile and reckless confidence. Too weighted down on the other by the weight Luke now had to bear.

He didn’t know if Leia could feel either in as much detail, or if she knew that she was the steady one, now, her quiet determination cementing them together as one.

“He knows we’re coming,” she stated. Like it wasn’t a hope, but a fact.

And even when the vision faded, Han remained there. This little voice without words, that still seemed to say _No adventures without me again_.

Leia was right. Something had changed, in Han’s presence. Luke didn’t know if Han himself was aware of it—he was still down there somehow, lost, in layers of something like sleep.

But at some level, they were together. All three of them, somehow, again.

The droids had already infiltrated the palace. Tomorrow, once Chewie got here, Leia would start on her part of the plan. They’d be separated again, even if—no, when—they were successful. Happiness, if it ever came, would be a long way from here.

The cold weight of what Luke had learned on Bespin still slept somewhere deep his his heart, as Leia slept on the sandy floor beside him. But everything had changed now. It was like he had been groping for his path in a dark, empty tunnel. But he’d chosen the right forks, and if it cost him his life, he’d come out of it—to where Leia, and now Han, waited, believing in the moment when all of them would rise.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, all comments and feedback are welcome! There are a couple of ways I think this one went wrong but... I wrote something. Moving on. Tomorrow’s should be fluffier and more original and I am taking a BREAK from Luke’s POV. :P


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